After former President Donald Trump gave some remarks to reporters assembled outside of his New York trial on Tuesday, CNN’s host of The Lead, Jake Tapper, brought on the network’s resident fact-checker, Daniel Dale, to assess the accuracy of Trump’s claims. In one instance, Dale shamed Trump for calling D.A. Alvin Bragg a Soros-backed prosecutor, even going so far as to claim Soros is a frequent victim of anti-Semitism.
Tapper began, “Let's bring in CNN's Daniel Dale, who fact-checks what we just heard from Donald Trump. He started off criticizing the case, what happened on the case. Daniel, then he turned to protests on college campuses, then he turned to inflation, then back to the case. What's -- what caught your notice?”
For his first fact-check, Dale chose a topic of questionable importance: is Trump leading in all the polls or merely most of them? He declared, “There was a lot there. Some of it was subjective opinion. I won't try to fact-check, but a few things to fact check. One, he claimed again that he's leading in all the polls. No, he's slightly leading in national polling averages, but he's trailing in a good number of polls, especially those that have come out in the last week or so. There are at least a few.”
Dale then went off the rails, “He refers frequently to Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, the prosecutor behind this case, as a Soros-backed district attorney. Now, I'd say there's some arguable basis for that, but I think it's important to clarify the facts.”
He elaborated, “So, Mr. Soros, who's a liberal billionaire philanthropist, also a frequent target of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, did not make any direct contributions to Mr. Bragg's election campaign. He also says he's never spoken once to Mr. Bragg. What did happen was he donated to a liberal PAC that then in turn donated to Mr. Bragg's campaign, as well as other reform-minded prosecutors. So, this is at best a one-step removed relationship.”
As Dale would say, “there was a lot there.” First, with anti-Semitism surging on college campuses, labeling criticisms of Soros’s political donations to far-left causes, including those anti-Israel encampments, as anti-Semitic is as nonsensical as it is appalling. Second, Dale wants to pretend as if Soros giving money to an organization, which in turn donates it to a candidate, is somehow evidence that Soros doesn't financially support Bragg. Soros doesn’t need to have spoken to Bragg to support him. Plenty of people donate to organizations, who in turn donate to candidates because they support those groups’ missions and trust them to donate to candidates who support that mission. Soros just does so in great quantity. Third, “reform-minded” is a convenient way of hiding their soft-on-crime progressivism.
Here is a transcript for the May 7 show:
CNN The Lead with Jake Tapper
5/8/2024
4:35 PM ET
JAKE TAPPER: Let's bring in CNN's Daniel Dale, who fact-checks what we just heard from Donald Trump. He started off criticizing the case, what happened on the case. Daniel, then he turned to protests on college campuses, then he turned to inflation then back to the case. What's -- what caught your notice?
DANIEL DALE: There was a lot there. Some of it was subjective opinion. I won't try to fact-check, but a few things to fact check. One, he claimed again that he's leading in all the polls. No, he's slightly leading in national polling averages, but he's trailing in a good number of polls, especially those that have come out in the last week or so. There are at least a few.
He refers frequently to Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, the prosecutor behind this case, as a Soros-backed district attorney. Now, I'd say there's some arguable basis for that, but I think it's important to clarify the facts.
So, Mr. Soros, who's a liberal billionaire philanthropist, also a frequent target of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, did not make any direct contributions to Mr. Bragg's election campaign. He also says he's never spoken once to Mr. Bragg. What did happen was he donated to a liberal PAC that then in turn donated to Mr. Bragg's campaign, as well as other reform-minded prosecutors. So, this is at best a one-step removed relationship.
